The Crimson Dance
by teabizarre
Summary: AU/Post-Second War/female Harry. This wasn't the ending she prepared for.
1. Chapter 1

**The Crimson Dance**

1.

Harriet Potter, of thirty-four Harper Way, London, woke with a start, her forehead prickling and her face clammy.

Tonight was a good night: she made it to the bathroom before she was sick. She heaved until there was nothing left, then rinsed her mouth and splashed cold water on her face. The headache was already fading, reduced to thin splinters of pain pricking away behind her eyes, but the nightmare that had inspired it did not disappear as quickly.

In her dream, Voldemort hung suspended in the air. The last tendrils of their colliding spells fizzled between them. She could see the faces of the crowd—the fear, the desperation, the hope. She could feel all their expectations pressing down on her. Her chest felt leaden as she waited for him to hit the floor, to be defeated and dead. But in her dream, that moment never came.

He just hung there; time was stopped. Fear prised at her stomach. She couldn't move, she couldn't breathe. Then the light seeped in. Bright, white, so transcendent it was like it had no substance at all. It peeled away at the edges of the scene like a photograph curling, and then she was back at King's Cross. The dome rang high above her. She could hear a train approaching, puffing and shrieking on the tracks like the Hogwarts Express. Her stomach dropped as the realisation hit her: failure. She had failed. Voldemort was still alive. She hadn't managed to kill him.

Dumbledore's hand fastened on her shoulder.

'You tried, Harriet,' he said. His voice warbled and then it wasn't him gripping her shoulder, it was Tom Riddle. Tall, handsome, pale and empty-cheeked, sneering at her, his eyes flashing red. The train was there. Its doors had rolled open. She tried to sprint through them, but Tom Riddle yanked her back, his fingers curling around her arms possessively. He held on until the train had left, and then he was laughing, because he knew that she knew—she was stuck there forever. She was dead and stuck there with him and his too-wide smile and his dreadful, bright eyes.

That was usually when she woke, every inch of her panic-stricken. That was why she threw up. She was losing weight. Things were better during the day, with the noisy halls of the Ministry and the Auror training to keep her busy and to preoccupy her mind, but when the sun set, and the house grew quiet, _his_ spider-like fingers still hugged her face tight, tilting it up so he could see the scar, his body new and reeking of death, the graveyard blossoming in blood and bone around them.

She stared warily at her reflection, dim in the dark bathroom. The candle she'd left burning on her night stand illuminated only a sliver of her face. A bright green eye stared back at her, as did the tip of her nose and a puff of lip. Her hair looked black in this light, but in the sun it was a deep, deep shade of red. Only the very edge of the scar showed beneath her fringe, a shade or two darker than her pale skin. The wedges under her eyes were ghoulish.

_He's dead_. She leaned forward until her nose almost touched the mirror. _He's dead. You saw him. You felt it. You know it in your soul. Voldemort is dead. He's never coming back. You did it._

It had been three months. The headlines had died down. The battle was less news now than it was myth or legend. She'd turned eighteen. Life had gone on. It seemed impossible to her, faced as she was each night with its wreckage in her dreams—with the corpses and the ghosts of the War clinging to her eyelashes like tears. But life kept moving forward. And she was lagging, falling steadily behind.

It felt like she was trapped in slow-motion. She ran as fast as her legs could carry her, but everyone disappeared farther and farther into the distance, now their eyes were pinpricks, now their faces were indistinct blurs, now they weren't there any more. She couldn't shake off what had happened like everyone else seemed to have done. She dropped deeper and deeper into shadow as their new beginning wore on and became routine, became _living_. Some days it felt like they didn't even notice her absence.

She returned to bed, blowing out the candle and moodily rearranging her pillow, aware of her rustling movements in the silent, undisturbed house. She wondered how long Ron and Hermione would tolerate her presence. They'd all rented this house together as soon as they started their training—she and Ron as Aurors, Hermione at Magical Creatures—but now that Ron and Hermione were engaged, it was only a matter of time before they'd want their own place. Privacy. Family. Their future held weddings and children and weekends camping. Harriet had always known that they would end up together, and she'd always thought that she'd be right there with them. No, it wouldn't be the same as before, but she would still have a place in their lives. After all, they were her family.

But now she wondered. Now she wasn't so certain. They had stopped being 'Ron' and 'Hermione'. Increasingly they were a singular, a 'we' in which she had no part. She didn't think her exclusion was intentional, and she felt guilty for feeling how she did—like they owed her more than this.

_They don't owe me anything_. She told herself this over and over, used it to assuage the swell of anger that rose whenever she found herself alone, which was often. She'd done what she had done because she had to, because it was the right thing to do—because who else? She'd done it because she'd always seen the way Ron and Hermione were meant for each other, and Harriet had looked at the people around her—the Weasleys, Trunks and Lupin, Neville and Luna—families and friends and couples, none of them as damaged as she was. _She_ was torn and infested, a moving target, endangering everyone she cared about. Who else?

She did it for them. She did it because for a few years they made her happy and she wanted them to have a chance at a future, a safe, happy future. That was why she walked out to meet Voldemort that night. Her knees had barely been able to support her and her mouth had been so dry she struggled to breathe, but she had kept thinking that if she did this, if she let him murder her, then they had a real chance at a happily ever after.

And now here it was. It was over (_it's over, it's over, he's dead, you saw him die, he's dead_). Voldemort was dead. The people Harriet cared about were safe. They were healing and moving on. She'd done it. She'd done for them everything that she had wished someone would do for her. Here was the happiness she was supposed to share in; the daydream she'd had about their futures, before she'd realised in the Hall of Prophecy that for her there could not be one separate from Voldemort. That only one could live. That he was a part of her.

Here it was, and they owed her better than this.

She turned onto her side, rummaging her body into a tight ball, like she was afraid these shameful feelings would escape if she relaxed her muscles. She couldn't let them. She knew they weren't right. _They don't owe me anything..._

Didn't they, though? Didn't they owe her _everything_ they had? Their very lives? Did they think they would have been able to live together, to love, to marry, to continue, had Voldemort still existed?

No, no. Harriet shook her head minutely, pressed her eyes shut, dug her fists into the backs of them, opened them again. Little stars popped against the dark contours of her bedroom. _They didn't ask you to do anything. They were with you. They helped you. You wouldn't have been able to do anything without them. And they didn't know. They didn't know you were one of his horcruxes. They never expected you to die for them. _

But this renewed Harriet's unease and sent her curling onto her other side. It felt like the house was holding its breath waiting for her to admit what she had so desperately tried to keep from articulation.

Because hadn't they?

Hadn't the assumption always been there? From the very first time their path crossed Voldemort's, she, Harriet, had been the one to confront him. Who faced Tom Riddle? Who was left with Voldemort and his Death Eaters in the graveyard, Cedric's form prone, the Tri-Wizard Tournament trophy glittering stupidly in the dirt?

It always came back to her. She had to watch Sirius and Dumbledore fall. She had to stumble through darknesses thick with death and despair and loss. Her friends had looked to her to lead the way. They'd looked to her to do what had to be done. They'd looked to her to stop Voldemort. They'd looked to her to die instead of them.

_But that wasn't them._ Desperately, now. These internal struggles always brought her within the precipice of madness. _It was you. You _chose_ to do those things. You chose to fight Voldemort. You chose to walk into the Forbidden Forest, alone except for the shadows of your dead family. You can't blame others for the decisions you made. And they were good decisions. They were the right decisions. You don't regret them, do you?_

Harriet sat up in her bed and shoved her hair back from her face, holding it behind her head, curling her fingers into it, her eyes shut tightly, like sightlessness would prevent thoughts from forming. Her heart beat loudly in her chest. She remembered the way it had thundered that night in the forest. _Thud-thud, thud-thud. I'm alive, I'm alive. Thud-thud, thud-thud. I'm scared, I'm scared._

The truth was, there was one decision she regretted. It eclipsed all the anger and all the pain, all the relief, all the sadness. Tom Riddle twitched ignorantly underneath chairs. Dumbledore's beard gleamed and his eyes sparkled.

_I've got to go back, haven't I?_

_ That is up to you._

_ I've got a choice?_

An empty sob climbed up Harriet's throat. She pressed her hands tightly over her mouth, stifling it before it could escape, repressing the shudder that stole down her back, trying to stop the yearning she felt prickle along every particle of her body.

_And where would it take me?_

_ On._

Regret burned through her. This longing she did not fully understand. All these years she had fought tooth and nail for _life_, and now that she had it, now that it fell around her like shed skin, she didn't want it. It was the real reason behind her resentment. It was the real reason everyone had faded into the distance. They had grasped it and held on, whereas she couldn't find the will to even lift her hands. Her fingers were numb with apathy.

_I shouldn't be here._

The alienation was almost as strong as the conviction that she was right. Her allotted time had lapsed, and by staying on she was cheating. She felt like the dead summoned by the Resurrection Stone. _She did not truly belong there, and suffered..._

_I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't._

It felt wrong. Breathing, thinking, everything felt wrong: waking up in the morning, the sun on her skin, the clamp of Apparition, eating, talking. The colours had drained. Everything was a sticky sepia mess. A sign, a confirmation. _I shouldn't be here._ It was as insistent as a shoe put on the wrong foot. It was like being dizzy: the more she tried to correct her disorientation, the more she stumbled.

She fell, she'd fallen. Hers was the graceful arc of Sirius's back, the veil shuddering in anticipation. Hers was Dumbledore's broken body, his glasses knocked askew on an unseeing face. Hers were the dead: pale imitations of life, summoned for one last encounter. Hers was a loneliness so deep there was no sight or sound.

The tears eventually receded. Her shoulders stilled. Harriet lay staring at nothing, waiting out the night, waiting out her mocking heart. _Thud-thud, thud-thud. I'm alive, I'm alive._


	2. Chapter 2

2.

_Only Bellatrix and Sirius were still battling, unaware of the new arrival. Sirius ducked Bellatrix's jet of red light: he was laughing at her._

_'Come on, you can do better than that!' he yelled, his voice echoing around the cavernous room._

_Harriet saw Bellatrix's snarl turn into a hungry smile, but it was too late to do anything—it was Cedric all over again. Her limbs ran against the current as she untangled herself from Neville. Debris hung in the air. People were shouting. Bellatrix's wand was aloft._

_The second jet of light hit Sirius squarely in the chest. The laughter had not quite died from his face._

_Harriet's wand burned into her hand as Dumbledore, too, spun toward the dais._

_It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall: his body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backwards. Harriet saw the look of mingled fear and surprise on his wasted face; saw it freeze into place as the veil flurried restlessly around him._

_She heard Bellatrix Lestrange's triumphant scream, but knew it meant nothing._ It doesn't mean anything!_ Desperately Harriet tore down the stairs, battling against bodies that threw themselves into her way, trying to stop her._

_'SIRIUS!' she yelled. 'SIRIUS!'_

_She reached the floor. Her breaths came in searing gasps. She had to blink her eyes to see; she nearly fell. As she reached the ground and sprinted towards the dias, Lupin grabbed her around the shoulders, holding her back._

_'There's nothing you can do, Harriet-'_

_'Let—me-'_

_'It's too late, Harriet.' His voice was resigned; echoes in a grave. 'There's nothing you can do. Nothing. He's gone.'_

* * *

><p><em>Splinters of rock littered the empty stone aisles. The last echoes of Hermione's protesting voice had disappeared, as Ron and Lupin reluctantly pulled her from the room. No one else had said much. Dumbledore had looked at her a long time, and before Harriet would have worried that he had figured it out. But he hadn't. There was a part of her that they couldn't get to. Not him or Voldemort or even Snape. The part of her mind that was the snake that attacked Mr Weasley; the part that recognised that look in Bellatrix's eyes; the part where Voldemort had risen just minutes before, splitting her skull asunder, like the fountain exploding; the part she had used to expel his thoughts from her body.<em>

_Now she knew. She didn't understand how or why, but she knew, instinctively, in her heart, smouldering away in fear, pain and ashes. There was no denial left. She'd seen things so clearly through his eyes._

_Harriet could feel the scales and slither like breath in her neck. Dumbledore had seen it, too. That was why he hadn't been able to look at her all year. That was why he hadn't been able to see it tonight._

He_ was inside her, in her head. A part of her lived as he did..._

_And neither could live while the other survived._

_She could foresee the inevitable end. It made such terrible sense. In a way it was perfect._

_Everyone had gone._

_Her shoulder scraping the dias, Harriet started walking around it, pushing farther and farther away from it every time she passed her starting point, until finally she could only touch the stone on which the archway stood with the very tips of her fingers. Her breath laboured as panic fluttered in her stomach, Cedric's empty eyes staring at her, the cold of the room battling with the nervous heat in her cheeks._

_Then her foot hit something solid._

_Her breath stopped in her throat. Her fingertips prickled._

_The floor was empty; nothing moved. Harriet could hear her heart pounding._

_ It means nothing._

_She raised her wand, swallowed, cleared her throat. Her hand was steady._

_'_Finito_,' she whispered._

* * *

><p>The house in Harper Way sat in an alcove of tall trees, hidden from view behind their reaching branches and an overgrown hedgerow that ran along three sides of the property. It was a tall, narrow structure, and the topmost floor of three tapered into a gabled roof. The ground floor consisted of a large, dark kitchen that rumbled somewhat messily into a dining room, and a combined livingsitting room that had in the beginning smelled suspiciously of cow patty. The first floor was Ron and Hermione's, and had three bedrooms and the biggest bathroom. Hermione used the smallest of the three bedrooms as a study, but already books and parchment had started creeping along the narrow staircase that wound up the eastern side of the house, settling here and there in pilfered piles in inconspicuous nooks and on landings. They were trying to breach the second floor, which was Harriet's. It had a bedroom, a bathroom and the attic. Technically the entire floor was the attic, but this section was raised and got the most sun of any part of the house. It was here that Hermione's papers and books were trying to infiltrate, but Harriet populated the space instead with her own things. She'd hung a Gryffindor banner, gotten a stand for her broomstick, bought a pleasantly hideous second-hand sleeper couch and grew misty little plants with no magical uses in old cauldrons saved from Mrs Weasley's rubbish heap. An old dreamcatcher, left by the previous occupant, spindled in one of the high windows.

The woman who owned the house was a Muggle. She had been more than a little surprised when three teenagers showed up to view the place, not least because they were the only ones there. Part of it was the neighbourhood, which was a little seedy, and spent a lot of its time covered in a fine, clinging mist that spun like silk off the nearby river. The other part was probably Hermione's spellwork, about which Harriet and Ron were careful not to ask too many questions or imply anything unsavoury, for Hermione reacted badly when they did.

Harper Way ended in a cul-de-sac and only a handful of houses in the street were occupied. The rest sat in large, overgrown yards, empty, held onto for tax purposes or out of spite. The neighbourhood tattered to the edges of an increasingly industrial area, and beyond the knotted old trees and flaking roofs you could make out the beginnings of a grey steel wasteland, with sharp spires and angular lines and new roads. If the mist settled, the tops of the buildings looked like a giant graveyard hovering on the horizon.

It was this sight that greeted Harriet that Saturday morning. She'd managed a few hours of fitful sleep, each time upon awakening expecting to find Voldemort hovering over her, an inquisitive edge to his malice as he whispered '_Crucio_.' Some days his presence was everywhere: he was Tom Riddle in the tall, dark-haired man striding past her with a briefcase, or the sullen child at the small park by the intersection she sometimes crossed on her way to the Muggle convenience store two blocks down. As a car's headlights swerved past, his shadow flitted in the gaps between buildings, his body elongated as if by a wandtip's green flare. He was in the disgust that pooled in her insides—a burned, blighted infant—when she heard the things he and his followers had done, the Wizengamot stone-faced on the benches, the chains thick around the wrists of some lackey at the preliminary trials. He was on every headstone, in every grave, in every loss, in Mrs Weasley's eyes and the new lines on her face, and the empty places at the table when they all gathered together, as much to remember as to forget.

And he was in her. Often Harriet would catch a glimpse of him from the corner of her eyes, a shape of him, of his chalky pallor or his humourless smile, and she'd turn and it was her own face staring back at her, disembodied in a mirror, her eyes wide with shock and the beginnings of fear around her mouth. Sometimes she thought her eyes flashed red or that her shoulders curled in anticipation of a kill, or that a shiver of black euphoria erupted on her skin when she saw certain things, smelled certain things, tasted half-memories that weren't hers in the air. His soul might have been gone, but Harriet knew that its exit had not been clean; that it was remembered—that it was _missed_. This she stored away deep inside herself, like she had learned to do after she had found out what was expected of her, what the final outcome was always meant to be.

It curdled reason, but the yearning was there, undeniable and insistent. It was a kind of grief: she mourned for the loss of something that had, however insidiously, however malevolently, been a part of her for sixteen years. More than that, she mourned for the resolution that she had been set on, for which she had, however unwillingly, prepared.

_Thud-thud, thud-thud. I'm alive, I'm alive._

It was still dark when Harriet finished her shower, keeping the water cool, trying to wake herself up, like the cold would snap her back into life. She dressed casually and put her hair in a ponytail, a luxury she permitted herself on weekends. During the work week, she was all professional work clothes with stiff collars and heeled shoes and hair tugged reluctantly into respectability. Kingsley had not immediately recognised her on her first day, and perhaps wouldn't have had she not been standing next to Ron and Hermione.

Downstairs was deserted. Harriet made a cursory check of all the protective enchantments they had bound the place in, but she couldn't see or feel any disturbances. Kreacher was still asleep in the cubby he'd selected for himself at the bottom of some kitchen cupboards (enlarged, on the sly, by Hermione, and stuffed with blankets and quilts supplied by her and Harriet), and the yard was empty, and slightly neglected. The first glimmers of dawn sought its way sleepily out of the darkness.

It was as her eyes adjusted to the light, taking in the familiar shapes that lay outside the kitchen window—the line of trees, the stone bench, the empty pond beside it, the rusted remains of a chicken coop—that Harriet noticed something different. For a few seconds her mind struggled with the concept, but then her fist relaxed from her wand and she sprinted for the front door as she realised what she was seeing, who she was looking at.

The motorcycle was new and ferocious, and glinted dully in what remained of the unused driveway. Its driver propped the helmet he'd been wearing over a handlebar, easing out of a leather riding jacket. His boots crunched on the grass as he readjusted his weight, glancing over his shoulder when the front door popped open and Harriet appeared. His hand, which had frozen in a pocket, relaxed again. Then he grinned.

He looked different, Harriet thought. At their last reunion, the changes in him had been much more vast—the shorn hair, the clean-shaven face, the possibility of happiness in his eyes. Harriet had never before seen him so open. It had been like staring at a picture she'd known for years, and really _seeing_ it for the first time. His vitality had been so honest.

It was still there, but now it was less spontaneous, more guarded, like he regretted a reckless confession and was trying to make up for it with renewed brevity. Something inside Harriet twisted guiltily. In the days before he'd left, so soon after his return, she'd often caught him looking at her, sadness moving behind his eyes like a systematic slaughter of hope. She knew it was her fault that he had had to go. The pain of Remus Lupin's loss was too immediate; it did not need to be supplemented by the remembered loss of Harriet's parents, and they were so obviously in her: her mother's eyes, her father's face, and the pale scar that had taken them from this world, from her and from Sirius.

Sirius's grin faded, receded a little around the corners of his mouth. He cocked his head at her slightly.

'What do you think?' he asked finally, after an awkward pause in which they were supposed to greet each other, but did not. He motioned at the motorcycle. It didn't resemble the one that Hagrid had inherited: this one was sleeker, more streamlined, more honed.

Harriet had no interest in Muggle transportation, but she could appreciate speed, and the motorbike looked fast.

'Can it fly?' she asked, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jacket. There was a preternatural chill in the air. It reminded her of Dementors.

'Legally, no,' Sirius said, and the grin flashed again.

'Someone should probably tell Hagrid,' Harriet noted, returning the smile, somewhat reservedly. Lately it seemed to her that the more she looked at people, the more they looked away.

But Sirius's gaze did not waver. He laughed. 'I don't think anyone is stupid enough to try to fine Hagrid.'

'"Try" being the operative word,' Harriet agreed.

Their smiles dimmed as the silence renewed. Harriet found her shoes suddenly riveting. She wondered if Ron and Hermione were still asleep. The possibility that they might not come downstairs for hours yet frightened her. What if she and Sirius could find nothing to talk about? What would happen when there was nothing to distract him from the fact that she was the only family he had left—and that it was her fault that he'd lost the rest?

'Look, Harry,' Sirius began, shifting his shoulders. He looked pained, and Harriet knew what he was about to say. She shook her head to stop him.

'You don't have to apologise,' she said quickly. 'It's okay. I understand.'

The corners of his mouth turned down. 'Harriet, you don't,' he disagreed, frowning.

'I do.' Harriet was fairly confident that she understood the principles behind wanting to escape. In the first few weeks after the War she'd been too busy to think much about it, but as routines changed and the carnage cleared and her nights became insufferable, she'd often fantasised of getting on her Firebolt and swooping into the air, never looking back, never returning. But by then she had become trapped in obligations and assumptions: Kingsley had granted her and Ron early entry into Auror training, a favour quite a few people were outraged over; Hermione had found this house; Ron had proposed. There was a wedding to organise and Sunday lunches at the Weasleys. The more Harriet thought of going, the less wriggle-room she had, and now the bars were all but dead-bolted.

Sirius regarded her for a few moments, his face unreadable. But he reached some unseen decision and his eyes hardened.

'So soon after everything?' he asked her quietly. It took her a moment to understand that he was continuing their conversation. 'After not seeing you for years?'

'You had to go,' she said. What else was there to say? She knew why he'd had trouble looking at her and she couldn't even resent him for it because sometimes she had trouble looking at herself.

'I should have stayed,' he countered scornfully, 'and I should have come back long before-' But he broke off, his jaw shifting.

'You're back now,' Harriet intervened, when their conversation looked in danger of petering into fresh silence. When he didn't respond she pumped him playfully on the arm. It was a relic of their earlier relationship: Sirius hadn't quite known how to deal with a teenage girl, and had settled for treating her like her father, though a little more gently and with marginally less swearing.

Sirius's lips twitched, probably remembering as well. And yet there was a world of sadness in that smile because so much had changed since then. Before, he had been the very pinnacle of Harriet's world—a second chance at family, the only person she'd been able to truly confide in. Now they were practically strangers, with only a war and its dead victims and shadows and graves and grief and lost futures to bind them.

His smile faded into a worn look of remorse, and for a second he vividly reminded Harriet of the way he'd been, when they had first met: hollow cheeks, hungry eyes, his mind ravenous with madness and despair.

'I'm sorry that I left.' His fingers briefly fastened on her arm, forcing her to look at him. His eyes were uncomfortably bright. It occurred to Harriet that she'd never seen him cry before. She'd seen him depressed and sorrowful, she'd witnessed his rages and his grief and his loneliness, but his vulnerability had never been so exposed.

And Harriet could tell that he wasn't just apologising for leaving three months before—he was apologising for _all_ of it. For the hatred and anger and arrogance that drove him to confront Peter Pettigrew. For the years of stubbornness before, that had made it easy for people to believe that he was capable of murder. For his reckless desire to avenge and for his grudges. For not quite being able to separate Harriet as a person from her father or from her mother. For thirteen years of his life wasted. For not being able to meet her eyes, his body half-turned toward Grimmauld Place's door. For the stiff hug that wasn't enough. For his wordless, letterless absence and the overwhelming feeling that it was all her fault.

For the intermittent, searing burst of fire against her skin. For what she'd had to do, the lies she'd had to tell, to set him free. That she'd had to set him free at all.

'I'm just glad you're back,' Harriet said. Even as she said it she knew it wasn't the response that he wanted. What he wanted was anger and hatred. He wanted resentment and rejection. Those were the only feelings he could really deal with. He'd had thirteen years of nothing but bad memories, and happiness frightened him. In a way, he _wanted_ to be hurt.

Harriet understood this about him because she felt the same way.

Loss and pain were both inevitable. In their fulfilment lay a sense of satisfaction. There was no real devastation in cynicism. There was no destruction in hopes that did not exist.

But happiness and love? Both rocked perilously on the precipices of black abysses. They were precious and fragile and easily lost or squandered. And once you'd tasted them, there was no way to start again innocent of their penetration. Misery and despair would seep from their loss like blood from a fatal wound.

_(Sometimes Voldemort's taint was like a second pair of eyelids, milky and opaque __beneath her own. Sometimes they shuttered the world a nauseating shade of green and she'd __see things differently. Sometimes she'd look at Ron and Hermione's tender touches and see a weakness to be exploited. Sometimes she'd look at the long-standing bond between people like Arthur and Molly Weasley and her stomach would crawl with delight at the cruelties possible to inflict, and how long would they hold out and what would their eyes say when they finally, finally chose to betray one another for a mere minute's reprieve?)_

_(And now Harriet was looking at Sirius that way and for every strength that _she_ could point out, _he_ could find a corresponding weakness and Sirius's biggest weakness, his most fatal flaw, was Harriet.)_

That was part of the reason she did it—because if she didn't fight it the memory of Voldemort would blight everything, because if she didn't hold onto herself she'd fall. The other part was much more simple and much more frightening: she loved Sirius. The precipice was getting too crowded and there was no one else to do it and he was the only thing she had left. He'd just have to learn to look at her again. _She_ wasn't going to let go. She _loved_ him.

Harriet hurled herself into Sirius's unexpecting arms. She knocked her forehead painfully against the sharp ridge of his collarbone, but he didn't seem to notice: he just held her and exhaled into her hair. He smelled reassuringly masculine, like aftershave and leather and mint. For some reason the combination of smells reminded her of Hogwarts.

'You can't leave again,' Harried said, her voice muffled by her tears and his chest. His hand tightened reflexively on her hair.

'I won't,' he promised, his words burning with sincerity. And Harriet wanted to believe him. More than anything else, she wanted to trust that he'd always be there.

But beneath her ear, thrumming in his chest, she could hear his heart beating.

_Thud-thud, thud-thud. I can't, I can't. _


	3. Chapter 3

3.

_Harriet stood with two wands in her hand, staring down at her enemy's shell, and people celebrated around her._

_ Kingsley saw him first. Silence fell as he raised his wand. _

_ 'Surrender, Death Eater,' he commanded. 'Your master is dead.'_

_ Mrs Weasley raised her arms as if to stop her, but Harriet stepped away, her eyes intent._

_ Sirius looked...different. His hair was shorter, his eyes less hollow, his movements less restless and erratic. He held his hands up. His eyes never lefts hers._

_ 'Where did they get-?' Hermione started to ask, but Ron wisely put his hand over her mouth. _

_ 'Harriet, this man is an imposter,' Kingsley warned, when she took a few steps closer. _

_ 'The last thing I said to you,' she told Sirius quietly. You could hear a pin drop._

_ Sirius didn't hesitate. '_No one can know_,' he repeated. '_Not even Dumbledore._ And then you gave me this.'_

_ He pulled the collar of his shirt back. It was almost indistinguishable among the scattered collection of faded tattoos on his chest: a tiny phoenix, its wings spread over his heart._

_ Harriet pulled up the tattered sleeve of her t-shirt. Hers wasn't as detailed, but the shape was similar. It was all she'd had time for when she did the charm, the weight of the ministry pressing coldly against them, the voices fluttering in the veil above them._

_ She pressed the tip of her wand to her tattoo. As soon as the wood touched her skin, the tattoo on Sirius' chest responded, flaring up darkly, the bird's wings shaking._

_ Kingsley's arm relaxed—he'd understood. Behind her, Harriet heard Hermione's small '_Oh_' of recognition, and then she threw herself forward and into his arms._

_ His embrace was warm and tight. _

_ 'You're here,' she gasped. She was crying. She hadn't cried in a long time._

_ 'You did it,' he replied, and held her tighter._

* * *

><p>'Pwahdegwavypweez.'<p>

'Ron!' Hermione hissed, but indulgently, pumping him in the ribs.

He tried to swallow everything in his mouth in one go and began to choke. Charlie slapped him on the back without looking at him or breaking off his conversation with Neville, whose fork lay forgotten in the remnants of Mrs Weasley's cottage pie.

'It's like catnip for cats,' Neville was telling Charlie excitedly. When he talked about plants he stopped being self-conscious long enough not to fall over or break things.

'But for dragons.' Charlie looked politely sceptical.

Sitting next to Sirius a place down the table, Harriet heard George mutter, 'Dragon nip' to himself and smile, like he was sharing a joke with someone who wasn't there.

'They're conducting studies,' Neville defended himself, his voice growing louder, 'and they've shown that-'

'So what you're saying,' Bill interrupted him, 'is that you can subdue dragons...by planting Devil's Snare in your garden?'

'Yes!' Neville said, beaming. It took him a second to understand why everyone was gaping at him, and why George was disguising his laugh as a cough.

'Oh,' he said, and his face fell. Harriet thought that it was rather like watching him lose his Remembrall all over again and opened her mouth to ask a non-specific but eager question about botany, but Ginny beat her to the punch.

'Neville's got Devil's Snare at Hogwarts,' Ginny said loudly. Neville's blush started at collar-level and crept up the rest of his face as she spoke. 'It's one of the biggest in the world and it hasn't laid a tentacle on him once, has it, Neville?'

He prodded at his cutlery, bright red and delighted. 'Just once, when I got it for the first time,' he said, waving it off.

'But just the fact,' Hermione began angrily, and several people—including the Minister for Magic, though they all just called him Kingsley—slumped a little in their seats or busied themselves with third or fourth helpings (Ron was half-way through his fifth). They'd only just managed to wrest the conversation away from Hermione's animal rights obsession. '-that they're considering _legalising_-'

'For good reasons!' interrupted Charlie, holding his fork a little too much like a weapon. 'It's not-'

'Gravy?' Ron tried, hopeful, but halfway through the word he turned it into a cough, avoiding Hermione's flashing eyes.

'_Good reasons?_' she repeated, voice scathing. It seemed to Harriet that the angrier Hermione was, the more frizzed her hair looked.

'Conservation-' Charlie began to retaliate, but Mrs Weasley wisely chose that moment to usher the puddings onto the table.

They were all crowded into the Burrow's long, narrow dining room/kitchen, which meant that elbows had to be lifted and weight diverted to accommodate movements such as breathing. Harriet leaned back to avoid the plate of treacle tart—Mrs Weasley always gave her the first and biggest slice—from slamming into her elbow and knocked her feet against Sirius's, who accidentally knocked his into George.

'Hey there, sweetheart,' George stage-whispered at him, tipping him a big wink. Kingsley choked on his meringue.

'Any idea what you'll do next?' Mr Weasley asked Sirius. He was at the head of the table and wearing a blue-patterned showering cap, which Harriet recognised as one she'd given to him for his previous birthday, along with other assorted Muggle oddities.

Sirius stopped the assault on his rum cake long enough to say, 'I'm not sure yet,' before turning to Hermione and asking, 'What was that you were saying about the dragon legislation?'

'There is always a place for you at the Ministry,' Kingsley said. His voice was as deep, slow and melodious as ever, though he'd recently exchanged the golden hoop in his ear for a sparkling stud. It was probably part of the reason that he'd been voted _Witch Weekly's Most Eligible Wizard_ for an unprecedented nine weeks in a row.

'I don't need handouts,' Sirius replied shortly.

George snickered. 'A helping hand might do you good,' he whispered.

'It's not nepotism,' Kingsley countered, ignoring George's jibe. 'You're a talented wizard. We need-'

Sirius cut him off. 'I know.'

It wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation. Harriet had been present when, three months ago, the blood barely dry on the Great Hall's floor, Kingsley had asked Sirius to take over the Auror Department. Sirius had refused point blank.

Mrs Weasley tutted. 'Be reasonable,' she told Sirius, whose eyebrows immediately furrowed, drowning his studied neutral exterior in a thick scowl. 'There's no one better for the job. Kingsley can't do both!'

Kingsley had been steadfast in his refusal to appoint anyone else. Even from where she sat, Harriet could see how tired he was.

'Molly, I can't work for the Ministry,' Sirius said. He was trying to stay patient, but Harriet could see that a fight wasn't far off.

'Why not?' Mrs Weasley demanded. She dropped Ron's plate, which she'd been in the process of clearing from the table despite his berry crumble being unfinished ('Hey!'). She turned her full attention on Sirius, her arms akimbo. Her children shrank back from the table and Mr Weasley made a nervous sound in his throat.

'_Why not?_' Sirius repeated, incredulous, his voice rising.

'Molly, please,' Mr Weasley begged, with a strained chuckle. 'We haven't seen Sirius in months, let's not-'

But that was the wrong thing to say.

'EXACTLY!' Mrs Weasley shouted. 'WHILE YOU'VE BEEN GONE _GLOBE-TROTTING_' (she made it sound like the vilest thing in the world, ranked somewhere below cannibalism) 'EVERYONE HERE HAS BEEN TRYING TO CLEAN UP THE MESS THAT EVIL BASTARD LEFT BEHIND, AND NOW YOU'RE ASKING ME _WHY NOT_?'

The colour had drained from Sirius's face.

'For years the ministry-' he started angrily, but Mrs Weasley, whose cheeks were bright, wasn't going to let such a little thing as a counter-argument get in her way.

'THE MINISTRY,' she thundered, 'NEEDS YOU! KINGSLEY—WHO RISKED HIS _JOB_ AND HIS _FREEDOM_ TO PROTECT _YOU_—NEEDS YOU! DOESN'T THAT MAKE _ANY_ DIFFERENCE TO YOU?'

At this point Harriet tried unobtrusively to move her chair away, because she could feel Sirius vibrating like a tuning fork, but that just brought her to Mrs Weasley's attention.

'THREE MONTHS YOU WERE GONE!' she shouted at Sirius, but jabbing a finger at Harriet. 'EVERY TIME SHE'S NEEDED YOU, YOU'VE LEFT! WHERE WERE YOU WHEN SHE WAS STUCK WITH THOSE—THOSE _HORRIBLE_ MUGGLES? WHERE WERE YOU WHEN SHE FOUND OUT SHE HAD TO BE THE ONE TO—THE ONE-'

Sirius's plate cracked into three pieces as words failed her. He sat back in his chair, like he'd been slapped.

'Mrs Weasley,' Harriet said quickly, 'please, it's okay, I understand-'

'NO! THERE SHOULDN'T BE ANYTHING FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND! HE'S YOUR GODFATHER—_HE'S_ SUPPOSED TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR _YOU_, _NOT_ THE OTHER WAY AROUND!'

Sirius was suddenly on his feet, his wand clamped in his hand and his knuckles white.

'Molly!' Mr Weasley objected, 'Sirius, please!'

'Why don't you just say it?' Sirius asked. His voice was cold and furious. 'Say it!' he shouted, when Mrs Weasley just stared at him. Harriet hadn't ever seen either of them so angry.

'If James and Lily had had any sense they would have made Remus her godfather.'

For a second Harriet thought that they were going to attack each other—Mr Weasley was half-off his chair and trying to get between them, Kingsley had stood and drawn his wand—but then Sirius kicked his chair back and stormed out, small pieces of the house exploding as he passed. A fine sprinkling of sawdust settled on the floor in his wake.

George was the first to speak. 'I feel like we never share,' he said, and sighed.

Mrs Weasley aggressively started clearing the table, signalling the end of the meal. She waved away her husband and two of her children (George and, to general surprise, Ron), saying, 'No, no, you relax, I'll just finish up here.'

Everyone filed out of the room. Harriet waited until Kingsley had followed George before she started piling plates onto each other. Mrs Weasley started.

'Oh, it's you, dear,' she said, flicking at her eyes and giving a too-watery smile. 'You don't need to, really, it's fine.'

'It's no problem, Mrs Weasley,' Harriet said.

Mrs Weasley sniffed. 'So you're not angry at me? For what I said? I didn't mean to be... I know he's had... I know he doesn't trust the Ministry.'

'He has no reason to,' Harriet agreed, scraping left-overs into the bin.

'Nor did you,' Mrs Weasley pointed out, 'but that hasn't stopped you.'

'It almost did,' Harriet admitted. She picked up another plate, keeping her eyes down. It was hard enough to talk about this as it was, without actual eye-contact. 'I know Kingsley went out of his way to get Ron and me in but I...I didn't really want to. I know it's different, and I trust Kingsley, but...'

_I must not tell lies._

'So I can imagine what it's like for Sirius.' Harriet moved on to another plate. Mrs Weasley's hands had stilled. 'He lost everyone he cared about—his whole life—in one night. And everyone thought it was his fault. That's...' But Harriet couldn't find words for what that was. It was terrible. 'Wouldn't you be scared, too? He's had to run for years just to be alive. That doesn't just go away. Just because the War's over-'

But just then Ron came stomping back in. 'Is there any more puh...err, ding?' His voice faltered as he detected the emotional edge to the room, and his gonads retracted.

Mrs Weasley glared at her youngest son, but it was the escape Harriet needed. Hearing her own words, she hadn't been sure she was even still talking about Sirius—something that Mrs Weasley no doubt had picked up on. There was a sympathetic pucker to her face that did not bode well for escaping emotionally-obstructed.

'I should go, I'm pretty wiped,' Harriet said. She tossed a dish towel at Ron's face. 'Help your mother, and tell Hermione I'll see her later. Mrs Weasley.' Harriet had to stoop to hug her. It still amazed her that such a short, round woman could bustle up so much wrath. 'Thank you for dinner, it was amazing, as usual.'

Mrs Weasley tutted but released her. 'You take care, dear.'

Harriet hurried out before Mrs Weasley could change her mind. It was a cold night, and around the Weasleys' ramshackle yard the moors were adrift in moonlight. Harriet had the eeriest feeling that she was being watched, and she spent a few minutes checking the perimeter, but with nothing amiss she Apparated home.

The house in Harper Way was dark, its silhouette fluffy in the mist. Judging by the rhythmic croak coming from under the sink, Kreacher was already fast asleep. Harriet tiptoed past him and up the stairs and only relaxed when she stepped into the warm berth of the second floor. She tossed her jacket onto the couch and muttered, '_Lumos_.'

As her wand tip ignited light sprung into the darkest pockets of the room, and for a second—just long enough to make her stomach drop to the soles of her feet—a pale, handsome face leered at her from the shadows, his eyes bright with excitement, Ginny lying in a shapeless bundle on the cold stone floor behind him.

But the shadows jerked when Harriet fumbled back, and there was just the furniture arranged haphazardly around the window, the couch Sirius had slept on the night before still unmade.

* * *

><p>Harriet was early to work, leaving the house before Ron and Hermione had even giggled their way through their first hot beverage of the morning. The whole night had been a struggle to stay in bed. She hadn't slept and Sirius hadn't come in. Every time she left her room, she half-expected his bag to be gone when she returned.<p>

The Auror Office was on the second level of the Ministry. It was a mess of untidy cubicles and every wall was covered with posters – wanted felons and Quidditch teams, stationary Muggle pictures of half-naked swimsuit models (both sexes, since Angelina started her training), maps, photographs, articles and newspaper clippings, even an Argentinian flag. Pale lavender files were stacked, squeezed, squashed and shoved into every available space, and coffee rings, cigarette butts, broken quills and ink-smears littered every work space.

As soon as Harriet entered, about a dozen inter-departmental memos zoomed directly at her with frightening speed. She ducked in under a desk, knocking over a pile of files stacked precariously on it. Two memos went down with them. The rest she beat to the ground with an empty folder, then gathered up their limp papery corpses and carried them to the back of the office. The trainee desks were rammed together in the centre of a small, open space. Harriet had as her view part of a window and Ron's mess. Still, she was better off than Angelina Johnson, whose desk was right next to his and in constant danger of contamination.

'You're in early,' someone drawled from somewhere behind her left shoulder. Harriet didn't turn around. Zacharias Smith had this peculiar habit of trying to snog her when she did, a situation in which she was not entirely without fault. To her credit, she hadn't imagined that anyone, even an imbecile like Smith, would consider a drunken semi-grope as grounds to press for a relationship.

Evidently she had been mistaken.

'Lots to do,' she replied shortly, when his oceany cologne did not dissipate. He'd spent the last two weeks in other departments and she'd gotten used to life without his frequent, ambivalent leers.

He chuckled or snorted – it was hard to tell. Harriet went about ignoring him, a task at which she was worryingly accomplished. When she stood up to begin the long and laborious search for a file a few minutes later, he'd gone.

The office slowly refilled, as fresh Aurors replaced those who'd been pulling double, and sometimes triple, shifts, and the tired ones staggered off to nightmares or insomnia or deep sleep that left them more tired than rested. Law Enforcement did the bulk of the footwork, but most of the follow-up and actual arrests fell to the Aurors. They were specialised and understaffed, which was why Kingsley had pushed for reforms in Auror training. Harriet, Ron, Angelina and the others (there were eleven of them in all) were the guinea pigs for his proposals.

Naturally there had been outrage. 'Progress for progress' sake' was a motto that had been taken up again and bandied about in the media. Luckily Kingsley poaching people from regular Law Enforcement for the Aurors had doused one furore with another, and Harriet hadn't seen any outcries from _citizens concerned with the state of the Ministry_ for a few weeks.

That was about to change.

* * *

><p>Harriet didn't notice the excited babble and the hush that followed it. Engrossment in minor details was one way she'd found to combat all manner of unpleasantness, and it took Ron two kicks and one pointed silence to her grumbled, '<em>What<em> is it, Weasley?' to abandon her quill.

'Working hard?' Kingsley asked from behind her.

'Or writing Zacharias Smith love notes?' asked another, with more than a little jade.

Harriet turned around. Her annoyance sprawled into surprise before righting itself into suspicion.

Sirius was grinning, open-faced and relaxed. He was clean-shaven and looked slick in dark narrow-cut pants, with a matching waist coat over a crisp white button-down shirt. Harriet hadn't ever seen him looking so _respectable_. Kingsley, robed in colours that made her eyes water, looked odd standing next to him, whereas before they'd complemented each other's weird nicely.

'What are you doing here?' Harriet blurted, shocked. Maybe she imagined it, but she could swear Sirius's eyes hardened before he turned his face away. Kingsley jovially slapped him on the back.

'You're looking,' Kingsley said, raising his voice for the benefit of the Aurors packed into the space like water in cracks, 'at the new head of the Auror Office.'

There was a second's pause...then the room erupted. Ron sprang up and rushed over to wring Sirius's hand, which he dropped quickly when it became apparent that Angelina Johnson had conjured a crate of Butterbeers and was passing them around. Harriet tried to catch Sirius' eye but there was a bit of a scrum and by the time she'd pressed her way through the celebrating crowd, he and Kingsley were headed back to the elevator.

'Sirius!' she yelled, trying to follow. 'Sirius, wait!'

But Sirius didn't look around. Moments later the golden grill slammed shut and the elevator rattled noisily away, leaving Harriet alone in the hallway, conscious of the prick of absence along the lining of her stomach. It took her a minute to place the exact cause of her dismay; of the frightening sense that she had just lost something, something fragile and necessary, something she couldn't live without.

He had never not come when she called him; had never not fought tooth and nail to close whatever distance separated them. But now the distance raced outward like a chasm yawning, wide and blunt and jagged, and she could feel what little peace she'd held onto evaporate in the terrible open space.

Her heart crumbled like a late letter disintegrating in the palms of bereaved hands.


	4. Chapter 4

4.

I must not tell lies._ The words shone cherry red on the back of Harriet's hand, but still she wrote, carving them onto the page with reckless abandon. The parchment was soaked with her defiance._

_ Umbridge hovered behind her desk, self-satisfied and intent, eagerly wetting her lips when she noticed Harriet's glance. But something about this exchange was different from the dozens they had traded over the weeks of the new school year. It made Harriet nervous and, try as she might, her pulse burned more quickly against the narrow outlines of the words on her hand. She could feel the first drops of sweat dewing between her shoulder blades._

I must not tell lies. I must not tell lies. I must not-

_ Umbridge's undulating breath was suddenly right behind her, hot and quick against the back of Harriet's neck. Harriet dropped the quill, startled. It smudged the word 'tell' before the ink faded back into her skin._

_ Umbridge giggled behind her._

_ 'Is there a problem, Miss Potter?' she asked sweetly. Harriet could feel Umbridge's body heat clot against the small of her back. She had the sudden and almost irrepressible urge to flee. It took every ounce of self-control to remain seated, to keep breathing, but Umbridge still didn't back away—instead she moved closer by millimetres..._

_ The door opened. Snape stepped in, surly and sneering._

_ Umbridge froze for a second before she pulled back._

_ 'Professor Snape,' she said, surprise colouring her fluster. 'I wasn't expecting you.'_

_ His black eyes bored into Harriet's before he moved them to Umbridge, who straightened her ugly pink two-piece and tapped back around her desk._

_ 'I did not have time to anticipate our glorious reunion myself,' he drawled. 'It's urgent,' he continued, 'and private.' Again his eyes pinned Harriet down. She felt light-headed and ill and struggled to unclench her jaw._

_ 'Very well.' Umbridge cleared her throat. 'Miss Potter, you may go.'_

_ As calmly as she could, Harriet put the quill at the top of the parchment and gathered up her bag. Only when she'd closed the door behind her did she run; and she only stopped when she reached the shortcut to Gryffindor tower, the one behind the tapestry. Here her knees gave out. She slid into a trembling pile, willing herself to calm down, to not retch, holding back the tears and the anger and the terror, shuddering and repulsed._

Tell_._

_ The word was knowing and mocking; alive with perversion. _

_ I must not _tell.

_She heard it in Umbridge's voice: you must not tell. Shhhh..._

_ Harriet shook her head, trying to dislodge the tumorous disquiet that she had just escaped something prolifically evil; evil and intimate and wrong and sadistic. But she couldn't quite convince herself that she was making it all up. _

_ By the time she pulled herself together and started toward Gryffindor Tower, the castle was quiet and the darkness outside absolute. She felt emotionally bruised; the tender wounds flared up when a shadow materialised to her right, in the empty niche of a wandering suit of armour._

_ It was Snape. He detached from the darkness, leaving no doubt that he'd been waiting for her. For the first time it occurred to Harriet that maybe the reason he wasn't afraid of darkness wasn't because he had darkness in him, but because he had light. Maybe it was courage more than habitat; fearlessness more than comfort. _

_ Harriet had no strength left for denials or excuses. She stared dully at the ground, awaiting her sentence like it was the guillotine that would finally sever her from this hellish day._

_ 'Show me your hand.'_

_ This was unexpected. Harriet blinked at him._

_ 'Your hand, Potter.'_

_ Harriet felt detached from the limb she lifted. His wand tip ignited and he bent over her arm, not quite touching her. His examination was wordless and after a moment he straightened, frowning, the expression exaggerated by shadow._

_ 'Soak it in Murtlap essence.'_

_ Harriet was so surprised she forgot, for a second, that they hated each other, that Sirius hated him, that he was loathsome and evil. And for that second she didn't see a bully or a teacher or a possible Death Eater, just a man the same age as Sirius and just as alone, and just as lonely. She wondered if they didn't have more in common than they thought. After all, both of them were still raging around wounds inflicted long ago, wounds that had festered and refused to heal._

_ 'Professor?'_

_ 'Murtlap essence,' he repeated, impatience obvious in the death cold of his syllables. 'If you're otherwise unhurt, I'd recommend you go to bed. Now,' he added, when Harriet hesitated._

_ And just like that the spell was broken, and he was just a miserable teacher again who wouldn't let an opportunity pass to torture or humiliate her. Harriet could have smiled._

_ 'Good night, Professor,' she muttered, and brushed past him._

_ He didn't answer._

* * *

><p><em>If Harriet had for a minute thought that Snape's advice had somehow altered their relationship she would have been sorely disappointed by his behaviour when she arrived at his office for their Occlumency lesson, but luckily she hadn't entertained any such notions. He told her she was late, insinuated that tardiness and arrogance were hereditary traits in her case, then barked for her to sit down and stop standing there like an imbecile. She took her seat with little more than cursory resentment. Whatever might have happened in Umbridge's office had he not arrived so timeously was something Harriet avoided thinking about, but she couldn't deny that there was a debt there, if only an accidental one.<em>

_ So, for now at least, she would handle his pettiness with as much civility as she could. He could think about it what he pleased, but she was determined to keep her slate clean. And she was almost certain outright politeness would annoy him more than any angry retort she could muster._

_ 'Did you practice clearing your mind before going to sleep?' he asked, once she'd lowered herself into an uncomfortable chair that faced him directly across his desk. From his sneer she could tell that he thought she hadn't. He wasn't wrong._

_ 'I tried, Professor,' she said, sounding more honest than she would have liked. Exhibiting vulnerability in front of Snape went against the grain._

_ 'You tried,' he repeated, somehow managing to imbue those two words with worlds of scorn. _

_ Harriet pursed her lips._

_ 'Despite what you Gryffindors choose to tell yourselves, merely 'trying' isn't good enough.'_

_ He was clearly referring to Neville, whose incompetence in Potions grew daily. Harriet was tempted to tell Snape into which orifice he could introduce this sentiment, but instead she said, 'Yes, Professor,' and waited for him to relinquish the secret to Occlumency which so far had eluded her._

_ He stared at her malevolently, then sat back and exploded into her mind._

_ It was like being pummelled with your hands tied behind your back. Harriet had no way to defend herself, nothing to shield herself with. Memories whirled around her like movies playing. There she was, aged nine, being scolded by Aunt Petunia even though she swore high and low she didn't know how the television had gotten on the roof. There she was, now fourteen, cutting a brush from Hermione's hair two days before the Triwizard Tournament Ball. Aged five, crying because Dudley had stolen her sweets, and on her birthday. Eleven, waking up on her first Christmas at Hogwarts, surprised by the presents at the foot of the bed. Thirteen, Uncle Vernon screeching 'Marge, Marge!' while trying to grab his sister's chubby ankle. Umbridge's office, an overwhelming feeling of perverseness thick in her pores, and then the door opening, and then another door, _that_ door, the one that haunted her dreams._

_ Here Harriet baulked and the memories ended abruptly, blinking out as quickly as they had started. She found herself standing, her wand clenched in her hand and Snape staring at her, his desk in pieces around him. And now _she_ was looking into _his_ eyes, into his mind, seeing herself pale-faced and bewildered and angry, looking at him and looking so much like her mother it hurt to see her. Lily's face had been different, more heart-shaped, but Harriet had her eyes, and she had that same way about her, that same precociousness that had frightened him witless the first time he'd met her, so long ago, on a sunny day in the park..._

_ And she was tossing her red hair over her shoulder, laughing; and stealing a wink at him in their first ever Defence Against the Dark Arts class; shushing him in the dark library; making him promise not to tell anyone before releasing a butterfly from her closed hand..._

_ 'Enough!' Snape hissed, getting up so abruptly that his chair tipped over. Harriet's heart was racing. She couldn't understand what she'd just seen...but then there wasn't anything _to_ understand, it was so obvious, so clear. How had she missed this?_

_ 'You knew my mother,' she said, ignoring the fury rolling from Snape and half stepping over a piece of jagged desk to claim his attention. 'You were—you were friends with-'_

_ 'ENOUGH!' Books tumbled from their shelves; a bottle shattered. Snape's face had paled and his nostrils were flared. There was a glint in his black eyes Harriet had never seen before. It was frightening._

_ 'Professor-' she tried again, wanting to reassure him, wanting to reach out—wanting to know what he knew about the woman of whom she remembered only screams. But the look he gave her was so black she automatically retreated._

_ 'Get. Out,' he spat, seeming barely able to contain himself. 'GET OUT!'_

_ The door imploded just as she ran through, and this time she didn't stop until she'd reached her dormitory._

* * *

><p>By the week's end Harriet's worst suspicions had been confirmed: between dinner at the Weasley's and his first few days at the Ministry, something between Sirius and herself had broken and dislodged, and now they floated unconnected from each other in a perpetually busy void. She only saw him twice in five days; he worked late when she didn't, and had gone out by the time she returned. Every time she saw signs of his passing or presence—a sticky coffee cup, a discarded jacket, boots on the stairway or a crumpled motorbike magazine in the bathroom—her heart further disintegrated. It felt like it was grinding against her insides and would eventually reduce her to sand.<p>

Sand and ashes, for her dreams had turned scalding with fright. Every night now she was confronted with her and Voldemort's suspended final confrontation; every night Tom Riddle's feverish grip on her arms tightened. He was pulling her down into the abyss of his non-existence, and she found it endlessly ironic that after everything he should still be in control. He was still orchestrating her life, and she was beginning to accept that she'd never be entirely free of him—that when two people were that tightly bound in life, however hideous that bond may have been, something of it remained after death, remained to haunt and ensnare until they were finally reunited, and the game could begin all over again.

This was a brand new dread, something Harriet hadn't ever thought about before, but now could not escape. What if? What if, when she died and the train rolled into that effervescent station, the conductor awaiting her was not some kind of angel or deity or relative—but Voldemort? Reanimated and as cruel as ever? What if that was her punishment for his murder? What if that was the price exacted for all the pain and suffering their feud had cost the world?

For the most part she couldn't believe this, even though her concept of divine retribution was vague and uninformed. That she was responsible for his death she did not doubt, but that she'd be held accountable for his dying seemed ludicrous. Yet a small niggle of doubt remained. It wormed into the soft tissue at the back of her brain and no matter how much mental picking she did, she could not dislodge it...perhaps because another part of herself, a small part, a shard of evil refracting all her efforts to be good, refused to let it go because it was a connection to that presence it missed, the presence that had once nestled behind her scar, alive and vitriolic. _It_ did not resent the post-mortem tether.

Friday morning was rain-drenched and cold. Harriet had put in an extra shift for the sheer luxury of not being alone the previous night, and allowed herself an hour more of staring at the dusty ceiling before rolling out of bed and into a hot shower. She was convinced that, apart from Kreacher (who was muttering in the living room, the subject of his ruminations Master Weasley's inability to clean up after himself) she had the house to herself, and the prospect of not having to pretend for Hermione and Ron's benefit cheered her up a little.

But when she walked into the kitchen she found that it was not empty. Sirius leaned against the table, staring out the rain-flecked window. His coffee was long finished and the day's newspaper lay untidily open beside him. He looked as strange as he had at the start of the week, uncharacteristically groomed and neat. Today his pants and waistcoat were light gray and his shirt pale blue. He even wore a tie.

'Oh,' Harriet blurted. 'Good morning.'

'Morning,' he said, crossing his arms and shifting his weight.

_It's coming_, Harriet thought, abandoning the futile search for a clean mug. Her stomach felt hollow. _Whatever is wrong is about to come to a head._

'Listen,' Sirius began, when Harriet turned around and crossed her own arms, like that would ward off whatever emotional blow was in the wind, 'I'm glad I caught you.' Like he hadn't been waiting for her to come down, to make whatever decision he'd made without her official. Harriet could feel the beginnings of blood burning in her cheeks.

'Why?'

Sirius wasn't surprised by the suspicion in her voice, just resigned. He looked very tired. Harriet wondered if the only person who slept soundly in this house was Kreacher.

Sirius stared at her for several moments. Then he smiled—faintly, and with no conviction.

'I've found a house.'

This surprised Harriet from her stiff posture. 'What?' she said.

'Apartment, really. In London proper. It's nice,' he added, but it didn't seem to matter all that much to him.

'You don't have to move.'

He chuckled. The sound was strained. 'I really do. I like Ron and Hermione, but...'

Harriet swallowed, desperately trying to think of something that would delay what was fast becoming an inevitable conclusion.

'Yeah, they can be annoying,' she conceded. 'In fact, I was thinking of moving out myself, giving them some privacy. I don't suppose there's a second bedroom?'

Sirius' expression didn't exactly change, but his eyes faltered and that was enough.

'It's hardly big enough for one person,' he said.

_This must be what being kicked in the gut feels like_, Harriet thought, battling to save face. She nodded, licked her lips, cleared her throat. Glanced out the window and picked at the sleeve of her shirt.

'I'll probably move tomorrow. Maybe you, Ron and Hermione can drop by on Sunday, see the place.'

'I'm working this weekend,' Harriet replied automatically. There was no distance between herself and her words. The whole situation was frightfully immediate.

He nodded. 'Whenever then,' he offered.

She didn't respond.

'That's all I wanted to say,' he continued. He folded the sleeves of his shirt back—he was suddenly all business. 'I'll probably see you later, at work.'

He waited until Harriet nodded, then pursed his lips in what was supposed to be a smile and left. A few seconds later Harriet heard the pop as he Disapparated in the garden. Everything, even Kreacher, was quiet. She could feel the solitude creep into her eardrums, hissing.

_No_, she thought, feeling her way to a chair as she struggled to keep the links she had to life fluorescent and alive. _No, you won't._

* * *

><p>The weekend was a lonely one. Once or twice Hermione tried to coax Harriet from her reclusive behaviour, but for the most part she and Ron were too busy whispering about the trials. The Wizengamot would begin to try Death Eaters that Monday. Harriet didn't resent her friends their preoccupation. For one thing, it was something she dreaded herself; for another, it meant they left her to her own devices, and she was free to flip through old school books in her room and reminisce about old times, times coloured rosy by nostalgia. She didn't see Sirius and didn't sleep.<p>

The Ministry was thronging with witches and wizards when Harriet arrived early on Monday morning. If there had been any way to avoid the crowd, Harriet would gladly have gone along with it; as it was, she spent the better part of an hour shaking hands and saying hello to people she either couldn't remember or hadn't met. Ron and Hermione were bemused by all the attention, Ron a little more flattered than flustered Hermione, but eventually they folded themselves into a crowded lift and began the chilling descent into the basement, where the trials were being held.

Down here things were more sombre. Harriet recognised a few reporters, including Rita Skeeter, but with the Law Enforcers lining the walls Rita didn't dare approach them. Harriet followed Hermione's bushy head through a pair of heavy doors, trying not to remember the last times she was here, but of course the memories were all the more eager for that. The dread and loss were strong enough that they left a bad taste in her mouth.

They took seats in the back and waited, not talking. Ron kept crossing his long legs and sniffing; Hermione rubbed almost incessantly at her nose, checked her watch, and darted her fingertips to her mouth but pulled them back at the last instant, instead squeezing her hands between her thighs. Harriet tried to shut out their nervous ticks, aware of her own relative stillness.

The room filled up. When the clock struck eight Kingsley came striding in, eye-watering in jewel-bright robes, speaking in low tones to Sirius, his Senior Undersecretary, a woman named Mavis O'Donnell, fussing with a thick roll of parchment in their wake. All whispers died down; the doors were shut; Kingsley threw off his cloak and pulled a stack of folders closer. And just like that, a moment they'd all been dreading passed and the first trial was officially in session.

There was little preamble. After glancing at the contents of the top folder, contents no doubt practically committed to memory by now, Kingsley looked around himself, as if noticing for the first time where he was. He took in the members of the Wizengamot, the press, the people in the furthest reaches of the room—his eyes resting for a moment on Harriet before turning to Sirius, whose face looked ominously set.

'Wizengamot versus Snape, Severus,' Kingsley said, and the heavy doors opened again. Harriet saw, from the corner of her eyes, Rita Skeeter tumbling from her seat in her haste to reach her acid green quill. But the majority of Harriet's attention was focused on the man walking, unescorted and scornful, to the throne-like chair with shackles at its foot and armrests, and the urgent titter of whispers that had broken out as what was about to happen sunk in.

It felt like the bottom of Harriet's stomach had fallen out.

'But this is a mistake,' Hermione said, looking to Harriet for confirmation. 'Kingsley said they weren't going to bring charges against Snape, not after-'

'It's Sirius.' Harriet's voice sounded hollow in her own ears. 'This is him. This is his doing.'

'How did he convince Kingsley?' Hermione asked. 'Kingsley _promised...'_

But Harriet had her suspicions. Hermione fell silent when Kingsley started to speak, the court scribe busily scribbling his words into public record.

'Official inquiry into the death of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore,' Kingsley said. His deep voice rippled around the room like a stone thrown into a pond of black oil. 'At the hands of Severus Snape, in June last year.'

Kingsley paused, waiting for Snape to seat himself. He did so with little gusto, not paying the shackles any deference. They didn't wind around his arms and legs like Harriet had half-expected. The links only clicked against each other before falling silent.

Snape looked different than Harriet remembered him. He was paler, if that was possible, and thinner. His resentment didn't wholly bury the exhaustion around his eyes, as he had probably hoped it would, and there was a hesitancy about the way he carried himself. Harriet vividly recalled the scene she, Ron and Hermione had witnessed from their hiding place a few months before, and the way his blood had stuck to her hands. For weeks afterwards she'd imagined herself still covered with it, unable to do anything but hope that the little vial of potion Hermione had plunged from the ever-useful beaded bag would do something—anything—to stop him from bleeding to death right in front of their eyes.

And though the potion had eventually staunched the flow, the venom tipping Nagini's fangs had done irreparable damage. Snape would never fully heal. In a way it was terribly ironic: like his inner wounds had been given a physical dressing; like the constant emotional suffering that had always hampered his day-to-day life had been neatly transcribed into a physical ailment, one he had even less chance of escaping than his grief.

'Interrogators: Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minister for Magic; Sirius Black, Head of Magical Law Enforcement; and Senior Undersecretary Mavis Jane O'Donnell.' Harriet could tell that Kingsley felt ill-disposed toward all the formalities. 'As this is merely an inquiry, Mr Snape, there are no charges-'

'But that can change,' Sirius added. His eyes were intent on Snape's face, like a cat eyeing its prey. Harriet thought that this amount of focus in him was unusual. Generally he was too roughshod for cunning, but then he had lived—survived—for more than fifteen years in a house with parents, siblings and relatives more like Snape than the Potters. Maybe she'd underestimated the influence that had had on him. And then, only a short time after escaping it, Sirius had spent thirteen years in a prison with nothing to nurture but all that was unwell in himself.

Yes, Harriet thought, identifying a glimmer of enjoyment in her godfather's face at Snape's sneering dismissal, there were parts of Sirius that she knew nothing about. Over the years distance had allowed him to hide the worst, but the more time went past, the more of it she was bound to see.

'Yes,' Snape answered, 'change at the Ministry seems quite abrupt.' He scoffed at Sirius, who smiled thinly.

Kingsley decided to ignore this. Instead he said, 'The details of Albus Dumbledore's death have been widely publicized; we're not going to rehash it all.' This sounded at least partially like a threat. 'But there are questions surrounding the relationship between yourself and Dumbledore prior to his passing. You have said that Dumbledore was dying from a curse transferred from one of Tom Riddle's horcruxes, and that he ordered you to kill him, if an opportunity to ingratiate yourself with Tom Riddle arose; is this correct?'

Snape's lips thinned. 'Yes,' he said.

'You were the only person Dumbledore told about this curse; is that correct?'

'Yes.'

'Why?' Kingsley asked simply.

Snape stared at him for two seconds. 'I treated the injury.'

Kingsley's face remained impassive, but Sirius' impatience won out.

'He means,' Sirius spat, 'why did Dumbledore trust _you_ with this information and no one else?'

'You mean why didn't he tell the other members of your precious Order?' Snape retorted, blanching.

'Yes, that's exactly what I mean!' Sirius responded heatedly.

'Maybe he didn't trust them.' Snape smirked.

Sirius opened his mouth to reply—Harriet could only imagine how colourful a reply it would have been—but Kingsley raised a hand and Sirius grudgingly fell silent, grinding on his teeth.

'Why did Albus Dumbledore trust you?' Kingsley asked, leaning his elbows on the desk in front of him, his voice like the rhythmic beat of a drum.

Snape's face stilled. 'I-' He stopped, cleared his throat, readjusted his arm. 'I warned him when the Dark Lord went after the Potters.'

'_It was your information that set him after them in the first place!_' Sirius roared.

'_I didn't know the prophecy was about-_' Snape began, almost reflexively, but he stopped himself. Harriet knew this was treading perilously close to the holy ground of his secret, something he'd buried so deeply in his own soul no one—not even Voldemort, not even Dumbledore at first—had suspected it, or its true depth or meaning.

But Sirius didn't know this. Harriet had never shared what she knew about Snape with anyone, not even Ron and Hermione. She didn't like that she was privy to something so private about someone who hated her, and she didn't like that it introduced Snape as an essential part of her mother's narrative and, by extension, her own.

She hadn't wanted to think about Snape outside of the box she'd created for him and assigned him to: as cruel, violent, untrustworthy, without a single redeeming quality. And for a long time she didn't. But this—this crippling loyalty to a dead woman, loyalty and love that had risked and nearly cost him his life on dozens of occasions—destroyed all those happy, depthless assumptions. It changed everything.

But he wouldn't tell all these people, Harriet realised. Not even if the knowledge expunged him from all possible guilt or suspicion.

'And despite this, Dumbledore chose to trust you implicitly,' Kingsley said, interrupting Sirius and Snape's argument. 'We want to know why. What did he know about you that we do not?'

Snape didn't respond.

'Let the record reflect that he has offered no answer,' Mavis O'Donnell said, glancing at the scribe, who nodded.

'Because there isn't any answer, is there?' Sirius goaded Snape. 'He didn't really trust you as much as we thought he did. You didn't kill him on his orders. You didn't kill him because he asked you to. You murdered him because you made a Vow with a Death Eater's wife for the life of her Death Eater son. You murdered him because you were in Voldemort's service-' (there was a ripple of discontent at the name) '-right until the end, and you only jumped ship because you could see that your Master wasn't going to survive.'

The dungeon was absolutely silent.

'He vouched for me,' Snape answered, after a long, unexpectedly fragile pause. He didn't look up. 'Dumbledore vouched for me.' His voice was flat.

_He lost him, too_, Harriet thought. Dumbledore was probably the last person Snape had ever really been close to, who ever really knew him.

'And he's dead,' Sirius answered, bitter and triumphant. 'There's no one left to vouch for you.'

Snape didn't have a counter-argument to that. But Harriet did.

'I can,' she blurted. Beside her, Ron and Hermione's heads whipped around.

'Who said that?' Kingsley asked, his voice booming in the enclosed space.

Exchanging a startled look with her friends, Harriet rose to her feet and cleared her throat. 'I did,' she said. 'I can vouch for Professor—I mean, Snape. I can vouch for him.'

She steeled herself for whispers, but there were none, just a vacuum of surprise. People gaped. Kingsley's mouth dropped when he identified the source of the interruption. Sirius stared at her disbelievingly.

'You mean to say you know why Albus Dumbledore trusted Severus Snape?' the Undersecretary asked, peeking over the rims of her tiny pair of reading glasses just to make sure.

Harriet's eyes locked with Snape's. His face was unreadable.

'Yes.'

'Well?' O'Donnell asked, when Harriet lapsed into silence. 'What was the reason?'

Harriet's confidence faltered. The only thing worse than letting Snape stubbornly resign himself to imprisonment was betraying his dankest secret to the light, and she owed him more than that (_tell_).

'That's not pertinent to this inquiry,' Hermione piped up, also standing. The faint flush in her cheeks were at total odds with the way she stared down her nose at the assembly. '_Why_ Dumbledore trusted Snape is irrelevant when you have someone who will testify to the fact that he did. A reliable witness,' Hermione added. 'Any questioning into what Harriet knows would have to be the subject of a separate inquiry.'

At this Harriet stared at Hermione, half-awe, half-exasperation. In essence Hermione had just asked the Wizengamot to try the person who had ended Voldemort's decades-long reign of terror, someone the majority of wizarding Britain regarded as nothing short of a hero. It didn't matter that Harriet thought them thoroughly mistaken.

Still, she felt guilty that she and Hermione were defying Kingsley and Sirius so publicly, a sentiment obviously shared by her godfather. From where she sat Harriet could see that he was angry. Colour had leeched into his cheeks, and after glaring at her for several moments he dropped his eyes, instead toying with a quill, spinning it steadily around in long fingers.

Kingsley, however, was calm. He nodded thoughtfully. 'Miss Granger's right.' Maybe Harriet imagined it but he sounded relieved—even a little pleased. She wondered if a spark of the old revolutionary still burned beneath the new bureaucratic façade. 'Are we willing to trust Harriet's judgment and let this matter rest?'

Here and there heads inclined to one another, but the majority of the plum-robed sorcerers looked confident about the decision Kingsley had reached. A few of them even nodded at Harriet, making her cheeks flare.

'Very well. Mr Snape, we the Wizengamot find no reason to doubt your version of Albus Dumbledore's death,' Kingsley said. 'You may go. Let's take a fifteen minute recess.'

Everyone started talking as soon as Kingsley stood. Snape rose to his feet and after a second's hesitation he left, irritably sweeping his way through the fresh scrum of reporters at the door and the guards trying to hold them back. Most of the Wizengamot wandered out after him, including Kingsley and Sirius. Harriet tried to catch Sirius' eye but he ignored her.

That dampened the victory somewhat and, instead of waiting to be interrogated by Hermione and Ron, she muttered an excuse about needing the loo and pressed her way to the elevators. She thought about trying to find Sirius and maybe hitting him for still nursing his schoolboy grudge, but when the elevator stopped in the atrium she allowed herself to be carried out by the stream. Here unexpectedly she found Snape, lurking in the reeds of an unoccupied corner away from the bustle and looking very much like he was caught between a rock and a hard place.

Harriet would gladly have left him to it, but he looked up and caught her staring.

'That was quite the stunt you pulled,' he sneered, by way of greeting.

'I'm a Gryffindor,' Harriet responded blithely, 'I can't help myself.'

'I'm glad to see six years of schooling have finally paid off.'

'Today more than most you should probably be grateful that I'm a Gryffindor,' Harriet pointed out, irritated.

Snape's expression soured a tad. 'I am.'

That answer surprised both of them and there was an awkward silence.

'Your godfather didn't look happy,' Snape said, after a moment.

'Don't talk about Sirius,' Harriet snapped, but more out of habit than conviction. She was beginning to see more of the side of Sirius that Snape had probably known.

Snape apparently sensed as much; his lip curled. 'Today's exercise was foolish. I expected nothing more from him.'

But, seeing the way that some of the witches and wizards were eyeing Snape with open suspicion as they walked past, their footsteps pattering against the ceiling, Harriet wondered if Sirius' decision to question Snape was as pointless as she'd thought.

'Actually it was very smart.' Harriet raised her eyebrows. 'People had questions about you. Now some of those questions have been answered.'

Snape's expression darkened. There was no avoiding now what they both knew about him and what he'd harboured since his school days.

'You could have thanked me,' Harriet said suddenly.

'For what?' He frowned.

'The photo. It was the best one I had of her.'

'Then why did you give it to me?'

Harriet paused, considering. 'I thought it would mean more to you.' She shrugged, steadily avoiding eye-contact. 'You have memories to go with her picture. I don't remember much.'

'But you saw her again.' Pain like cracks in fine china shot through the words. Harriet looked at Snape in surprise. 'The Resurrection Stone. You saw her that night.'

'I saw my mother's ghost,' Harriet said quietly. 'No one... You couldn't have wanted...?'

But he did, Harriet realised. She tried to ignore the sudden tickle in the corners of her eyes.

'Was she...?' His voice disappeared around the words. He refused to look at her.

'She didn't say much,' Harriet admitted. 'There wasn't really time.'

He nodded slowly, hiding his face. After a moment he straightened and his features were empty again. He cleared his throat, indicating that he was leaving.

Harriet stepped out of his way. 'Goodbye, Professor,' she said, as he brushed past her.

He didn't answer.


	5. Chapter 5

5.

_Harriet had been awake for hours, awake and walking around the castle. She found a kind of rest in the desolate hallways. It wasn't exactly peace, and it wasn't as good as sleep, but it was as close as she could manage to either with the guillotine suspended over her neck, waiting for opportunity, final, fatal opportunity to end her crimson dance with Tom Riddle._

_ Dumbledore couldn't have known that every memory they fell into, every piece of carefully collected information that passed between them like treasure was a confirmation of something Harriet had known since the previous school term. In the toiling moments she'd been trapped between Bellatrix's curse and Voldemort's possession, she'd sensed something shift in herself, something that had, until then, been confined to her subconscious. Something snakelike and poisonous; a cancer; a piece of him._

_ A Horcrux._

(Neither can live.)

_ In the middle of the empty corridor, Harriet's breath left her like it had been wrung from her lungs. She leaned her head against the wall. Breathe. The gloom tucked her into its chest and her eyesight blurred. She had never once been so afraid in all her life._

(While the other survives.)

_ Her throat felt like it was being constricted. Struggling for oxygen, she pulled the Invisibility Cloak from her shoulders. Breathe, breathe. But there was little air._

_ She wondered suddenly if this was him. His memory, strangling her from the inside out._

_ Fear pushed her from her feet. Harriet used the cool stone wall to steady herself, dragging herself along the corridor, half-blind in the darkness. She walked into the bathroom quite by accident. The door fell away from her hand, already ajar. _

_ A pale face tipped up at her entrance._

_ Both of them froze._

_ The only colour in Malfoy's face was a greyish tinge beneath a sheen of sweat. His eyes were sunken. The only light in them was a kind of frantic fervour, like a man tiptoeing along a ledge, like a lapse of concentration would cost him his life._

_ Harriet recognised it because it was something she saw in her own eyes every time she looked in the mirror. And now she was looking into his._

_ Malfoy spun around. His rage was instant, fed by years of resentment and prejudice. It was more than rivalry. It had always been more than rivalry. Harriet's hands felt suddenly empty without her wand, but she was too tired to reach for it._

_ After all, if he was going to kill her—if Malfoy did it, if Malfoy was the one... Did it make any difference?_

_ Harriet felt suddenly light-headed with relief._

_ 'You!' The single word was spittle and malice. Malfoy's hair stood up from where he'd jerked his hands through it so many times. His fingernails, Harriet noticed, were chewed into the quick; she could see blood lining the cuticles._

_ He'd been crying. His eyes were rimmed red and his cheeks were blotchy._

_ He started towards her; he even drew his wand. But in the face of her inactivity his momentum left him. Harriet realised then that he'd always needed her reaction to keep their contention from stalling. He'd counted on it to keep their mutual hatred from reaching an impasse neither could breach._

_ And she, dutifully, had always reacted. Suddenly she wondered why._

_ 'It won't be enough for him,' Harriet said, after a long pause. It wasn't even awkward: chiefly it was resigned, and tired—bone tired._

_ Malfoy's eyes were empty._

_ 'What?' he asked. He said it mechanically. They were doing it again: action/reaction. Setting each other off. Keeping it in motion, whatever this was between them: this fixation of fate._

_ He hadn't needed to ask who, Harriet noted. _

_ 'Whatever he asked you to do.'_

_ Something stirred beneath the grey. Scorn._

_ 'I could say the same about Dumbledore.' Malfoy smirked, but without the salvo of Harriet's indignation there was nothing left to say._

_ 'It's not too late,' she said. She didn't really understand why. Nothing had changed and for all she cared, Malfoy could rot. _

_ But maybe... _

_ Maybe if Harriet could save him from his fate, hers wouldn't look so bleak._

_ But Malfoy laughed at her hollowly. _

_ 'Too late? For what, _redemption_?' The last word sounded furtive in his mouth. Harriet wondered how many times he'd tasted it, tested it out, wondered about it. Always out of bounds, of course, from his family and his master. A secret fantasy...like another._

_ Something else she'd noticed recently. She saw so much more now that the ending was in sight._

_ 'Do you imagine he'll spare her?' Harriet asked him. 'For what—services rendered? A Mudblood?' _

_ Surprise caught his ragged breath in his throat. His eyes widened, and for the first time in weeks, that diseased light in them seemed to dim. But his grip tightened on his wand._

_ 'I—I don't know what you're talking about!' _

_ Maybe it was liberating, Harriet thought—finally having someone know something he'd stowed away so carefully, so precisely. Because how else had he hidden this from Voldemort? This was an infraction that went deeply against the grain. _

_ 'He won't,' Harriet said. She had the conviction of someone who'd heard an earlier version of this same story. She knew how that turned out. How that changed everything. _

_ He shook his head, dragging the sleeve of his sweater over his eyes, his mouth twisted in anger and a loneliness bedrocked deep in despair. _

_ He looked exactly how Harriet felt, but there was nothing to be done._

_ It was about choices, after all._

_ 'I'll see you on the other side,' Harriet told him. _

_ She didn't look back as she left, and Draco didn't follow her._

* * *

><p>It was past eleven when Harriet started awake, her mind reluctant to relinquish the first proper sleep it had had in days. But before she could bury herself more deeply in her bed, the knock sounded again. She sat bolt upright, her heart sprinting.<p>

It came from downstairs. Harriet scrambled out of bed, grabbing her wand and untangling herself from what felt like every sheet she owned. By the time she jumped the last three steps at the bottom of the staircase, Hermione and Ron too had emerged. Both of them held their wands.

'Who is it?' Harriet yelled in the front door's direction from where she stood, half-hidden behind the staircase. It only occurred to her then that true evil probably would not have knocked.

'Draco Malfoy,' came the muffled reply.

Well, she could be wrong.

Harriet hesitated, lowering her wand, exchanging bewildered looks with her friends. Ron's expression had already soured into the look of dislike and distrust that Draco Malfoy's presence inevitably aroused.

'Who?' Harriet repeated, playing for time.

'It's Malfoy, Draco Malfoy.'

Glancing again at Hermione and Ron, Harriet padded toward the door and started the laborious task of unlocking it. She cracked it open a fraction. The sky had cleared, and a line of pale white (_we meet again, Harriet Potter_) moonlight fell across the floor, gingerly touching the first stair across the entrance hall. Beyond it stood someone Harriet had known for almost a decade, but who could just as well have been a stranger.

'What do you want?'

Draco Malfoy hadn't changed. He was still tall and skinny, still slicked his milk-pale hair back from his milk-pale face, still wore black suits over black collarless shirts. He even managed to sneer, though Harriet guessed that it was more of an afterglow of habit than something he did with any kind of conviction.

'I'm sorry to disturb you so late,' Draco said, his voice stilted with the unfamiliarity of being polite to Harriet. In fact, he sounded quite odd, and for a moment Harriet wished he'd just go back to taunting her. 'I wondered if I could speak to you.'

Harriet heard the lowest step creek a second before Ron spat, 'Why do _you_ want to talk to Harriet?'

When Harriet turned, she saw that Hermione had followed her fiancé down. Hermione crossed her arms self-consciously over her chest, pinching the teddy-speckled nightgown tightly around herself. Harriet looked back just in time to see Draco's eyes linger, then duck, and the faint flush of pink in his cheeks.

No, he really hadn't changed.

'What about?' Harriet asked, before Draco had to wrestle with the additional burden of being polite to Ron, which might prove to be the proverbial straw. Harriet wasn't in the mood for the conciliatory noises Hermione made when Ron was angry at anyone other than herself.

Draco's eyes twitched over his shoulders. 'It's, uhm...'

Figuring that they had three wands against his one, Harriet stepped out of his way, opening the door a little wider. 'Let's talk in the living room.'

The lamps flickered on as soon as they sat down. Draco hovered on the edge of the beaten-up chintz chair in the corner, eyes flicking around the space and hurriedly changing direction whenever they accidentally strayed over Hermione or Ron. Harriet leaned in the doorway, waiting for the kettle to boil. She figured it was easier to just make the tea herself than to try to rouse Kreacher from what sounded like a very convincing slumber.

It took a few moments of watching his erratic movements for Harriet to realise that Draco Malfoy was nervous. Over the years she'd seen him angry, arrogant, frightened, resigned, malicious, preening—but never nervous. His fingers twitched on the armrests of his chair; he had to fold his hands together to stop the motion. A strand of his too-white hair stuck out from the rest, its mutiny exaggerated by shadow.

'This is a nice house,' he said, after another train of awkward silence had whistled past.

'As nice as your new place?' Ron said spitefully.

Draco's cheeks flared again, but he merely locked his jaw and made no reply.

The Malfoys had lost Malfoy Manor. Harriet had been there once, months ago. She often found herself doubting whether any of it had really happened. It wasn't hard, as her nightmares were so convincing. So ever so often, she made an excursion to some place tainted by _his_ presence—like Voldemort was a foul odour that had absorbed into the wallpapers of their existence. Godric's Hollow. Little Whinging. The boundaries of Hogwarts. Grimmauld Place. Harriet always found what she was looking for: death, sorrow, loss, destruction.

Malfoy Manor had been unoccupied. Even from a distance Harriet had been able to see that its windows were blank. The hedges were tangled and overgrown. Flecks of rust peeled from the impressive gate, and weeds had sprung up in the gravel drive. But for all that had happened there, in the watery sunshine that day it had looked just like any other house.

The strained silence persisted until Harriet carried in the tea. Draco unexpectedly rose to his feet to help her. Once the mugs had been distributed and (in Draco's case, tentative) first sips taken, Harriet, Ron and Hermione all stared at him, waiting.

Draco gave Ron and Hermione, squeezed together on the love seat, a sidelong look, but seemed to realise that they weren't going to leave.

'I heard what happened at Snape's hearing.' There was no inflection in Draco's voice...or maybe this was just what he sounded like when he wasn't surrounded by jeering Slytherins or scoffing Gryffindors. 'We were-'

'We?' Ron repeated sharply.

Harriet stifled a sigh. She had made peace with the reality of Draco, of their rivalry and their loyalties, a long time ago. In fact, she remembered the exact moment: his face hanging gaunt and grey in the cracked mirror of the boy's bathroom she'd mistakenly walked into, the tears dripping from his chin into the basin below, the way his face twisted when he saw her reflection beside his own.

Harriet had told Ron and Hermione about it. Ron had been all derision and glee; Hermione's silence had been pointed. They'd suffered his taunts and threats as much as Harriet had, so she supposed she couldn't blame them for holding on to that. But then Harriet and Draco had something in common that Ron and Hermione would never understand: they'd both been chosen for tasks they never wanted and had little chance of succeeding at. They'd always been battling the odds.

'My mother and I,' Draco clarified, without looking at Ron. He tried to make it sound like there had been no interruption. 'We were sure Snape would serve time. We-' He swallowed and readjusted the mug in his hands. He wasn't quite looking at anything anymore. 'My father-'

This time Hermione interrupted. 'You want Harriet to vouch for your father.'

Draco's face dipped.

'Yes.' He admitted it like he was swallowing poison.

'Why should she?' Ron asked, his voice blistering with indignation.

'Why did she vouch for Snape?' Draco returned, a little of the old bile colouring his words.

Hermione said, 'She knows why Dumbledore-'

Draco snorted, apparently before he could stop himself.

'What?' Hermione demanded instantly. 'You don't believe her?'

Draco chewed his lip, but he wasn't able to stop it curling entirely. It just made the effort look more constipated.

'Look, I don't care what she—you' (returning his attention to Harriet) 'know or don't know about Dumbledore and Snape. But it kept Snape out of Azkaban. And my father' (the sneer crept back in, stilling the anxious ticks and tremors) 'can't stay in Azkaban. I know—we all know what we did was wrong. By the end we weren't even really-'

'Death Eaters?' Harriet said, supplying the word he was reluctant to say.

The silence swallowed his denial.

'I saved your life three times that day,' Harriet said. 'And you would still have sold us out if you'd gotten half a chance.' Her voice was dispassionate. She wasn't riling, merely stating facts. 'So don't tell me that you weren't really Death Eaters. You only stopped being Death Eaters when his corpse hit the ground.'

Harriet had expected him to recant, but Draco's pale eyes glowed feverish with disdain.

'This isn't about me.' He slopped tea on the floor when he deposited the mug on the rickety table next to his chair. 'Or' (there seemed to be a slight tremor around the word) 'him...'

'Voldemort?' Harriet prompted.

Draco hissed at her, distractedly pulling his fingers through his hair.

'If my father doesn't—my mother,' he said urgently, leaning forward, his eyes far too bright, 'without him...she's wasting away. She's been in St Mungo's twice already this month. She won't eat. She can't sleep.'

A part of Harriet felt bad for him. She'd always guessed that he was closest to his mother. But a smaller part of her thought, God forgive her, that the Malfoys deserved every ounce of pain that life could tum from them.

Perhaps Draco sensed as much, because his eyes hardened and Harriet sensed that he was about to play his ace. It was like that second before he dove for the snitch...

'She's pregnant,' he said.

Harriet's stomach lurched.

'Her baby could die.'

An animal-like shriek sounded in her ear, no less sharp for being a memory, but Harriet didn't want to remember it too closely because if she had to start tallying the losses she'd never be able to stop, and this one, this one was so close (_Will you be his godmother?_)

'Harriet,' Draco said, fighting against the name in his mouth, 'please. We've paid our debt.'

_No_, Harriet thought, Lupin's face vivid in her mind's eye. _No, you haven't._

'If you had to equal every loss you caused you'd all be dead dozens of times over,' Harriet said. She wasn't sure whether this anger was new, fresh, like blood seeping scarlet from a wound, or if it had been there all this time—beating beneath the surface of her consciousness, freed by Draco's last self-righteous grope.

'_We've lost everything!_' Draco shouted, jerking to his feet so suddenly that Hermione dropped her mug. 'Our house, our money, our dignity—you want my mother and my brother's lives as well?'

All three of them had risen to their feet at his outburst. Harriet could feel her knuckles crack around her wand, she held it so tightly.

'You want our blood?' Draco demanded. He shoved himself into Harriet's half-raised wand. 'Well? Why don't you take it, like you've taken everything?' he spat, no longer attempting to bottle the hatred that barbed every word.

The boys' bathroom flashed before Harriet's eyes again. The smell of blood tinged with stale urine pinched her nostrils. She could feel her head pounding in time with her heartbeat. Her wand sparked, singing the front of Draco's shirt.

'The Wizengamot will take your mother's condition into consideration,' Hermione said. Her voice was not without sympathy—something Ron noticed; he turned his glare on her, but she ignored him. 'This isn't going to help your case, Draco. Come on,' Hermione urged Harriet softly. Reluctantly Harriet lowered her wand and took a step back.

Draco reeled. For a second Harriet thought he might fall over. But then he straightened his jacket and pushed his hair out of his eyes, heading for the door without saying anything. Only when he straddled the threshold did he look back. His eyes were icy.

'You're no hero,' he told Harriet, every bit the old Draco. 'You're no different from me. You can pretend you're good to _them_, but we both know that's not the truth.' His eyes lingered momentarily on her scar.

'Something about you...' His eyes swept her, and disgust riddled his pale lips, '...isn't right.' '_You-_' Ron started forward, but Hermione dug her fingers into his arm, holding him back. Sneering at them, Malfoy departed into the night, slamming the door shut behind him.

'Why did you stop me?' Ron demanded sullenly of Hermione. His ears throbbed a deep, troubling red. Hermione's eyes narrowed at his tone.

'So you wouldn't get into trouble,' she replied, folding her arms across her chest. Her chin started to jut—never a good sign.

'You don't think I can take Malfoy?' Ron countered, spittle flying. His pumpkin-patterned pajama bottoms looked ludicrously out of place.

'This isn't a—a—a _pissing contest!_' Hermione responded, spluttering for the right words. 'If you attacked him you could have lost your internsh-'

'Since when have you been soft on Malfoy, anyway? Somewhere between him calling you a Mudblood and trying to kill you?'

Hermione's mouth popped open and an ominous silence descended.

Ron realised too late that he'd crossed a line, and his trying to uncross it only made Hermione angrier.

'Hermione,' he started, more panic than remorse, 'I-'

'Don't bother coming up to bed,' she told him, her words like iceburn. She whipped around and stomped up the stairs. A few moments later a door rattled in its frame when she slammed it shut on the floor above.

Ron was breathing hard, his face flushed. Harriet could see his fingertips digging into his palms.

'Come on,' she told him, resigned, too tired to commit to either anger or outrage on behalf of either of her friends. 'I'll lend you a blanket and pillow.'

Ron followed her up the stairs and stood, awkwardly surveying her space. He didn't come up here often.

'Thanks,' he muttered, after Harriet handed him the untidy wad of linen that Sirius had used the previous week. She hadn't washed it yet, and as she retrieved it she caught a whiff of Sirius' scent. She had the sudden and desperate urge to press her face to the material and absorb as much of his reassuring smell as possible—an impulse that confused her. Her stomach did a nervous little flip. Ron, oblivious, was still mumbling about 'saw the way he looked at her' and 'he asked for it'.

'Was I wrong?' he asked, after a few moments of absent-minded shoulder scratching, his face blank as it always was when he did the most thinking.

'No, but you were an arse,' Harriet said.

Ron nodded, frowning. 'Right. Yeah,' he agreed, and looked miserable. 'She's going to be mad for days.'

There was no disagreeing with that. Harriet shrugged her sympathy. Ron grimaced and bade her goodnight with the air of someone walking into a funeral parlour.

He was halfway down to the first floor landing when he stopped and blinked back at her.

'I don't think that,' he said, like he was continuing a conversation. 'We don't think that. What Malfoy said. He's a git,' he added, with feeling.

Harriet stared at Ron. She knew he was too much of a guy to know what his saying that meant, so she let him off with a nod. She listened to his descent to the ground floor. Seconds passed. Harriet relaxed, sure that Hermione wasn't going to send a flock of birds after him again. The mess the last time had been astounding.

The house settled quickly into quiet, but Harriet couldn't find that deep blackness that had briefly held her under. Draco's visit had prised from her all desire to sleep. And even if she had wanted to...his voice kept biting into the soft tissue behind her ear, disgusted and triumphant, poisoning her with consciousness.

(_Something about you isn't right.)_

Harriet rolled onto her back, wrestled her feet free from the covers, balled up again. She expected to cry; she expected to feel something, but there was no real emotion, just an empty sense of resignation. Because she didn't disagree with Draco.

After all, there was a reason Voldemort had survived in her for as long as he did.

Whether this dark, separate pulse was a vestige of Voldemort or just a part of herself, the part his Horcrux had happily nested in, Harriet didn't know. And it no longer frightened her as such.

What frightened her was that she wouldn't be able to hide it.

If Draco saw it, then others would.

Did Sirius see it?

Harriet's stomach quivered. She pulled her pillow closer, meshing her face into it, trying to drive out the sudden suspicion that he saw right through her—and didn't like what he found there.

Maybe that was the real reason he'd left so many times these last few months. Maybe it was as simple as he couldn't stand the sight of her, of what she'd become.

* * *

><p>Harriet walked into the Auror office even earlier than usual the next morning, her stomach almost runny with nerves at the prospect of seeing Sirius. The day before a strange, detached sense of self-justification had kept her resolute against the way his eyes fumed at her, but today that feeling had gone. Everything felt overly harsh to her: the misty sunlight, the first they'd had in days; the shuffle and mutter of puffy-eyed Aurors; the clank of the elevator; the lingering smell of tobacco and coffee. It was like Occlumency. Her mind felt defenceless, overstimulated. Her throat was dry from yawning and her eyes felt swollen.<p>

She headed straight for Sirius' office, barely registering the looks that followed her or the whispers that kindled in her wake. She'd endured the brunt of the fall-out from her Snape stunt the previous day and had borne the clipped tones and rigid shoulders with ease, having suffered through several bouts of this while at school. By comparison this was quite pleasant, actually, seeing as nobody had attempted to throw ink in her face or start a duel with her after midnight.

Sirius' office was just off the main area. The heavy door stood open. As soon as Harriet knocked, the whispering inside ceased.

She peered around the frame and was surprised to find Hermione staring back at her.

'Oh,' Harriet said, 'I thought you were still-'

'I was,' Hermione said, almost snapping. She was flustered...and determined. She exchanged a look with Sirius, who was sitting with his ankles crossed on his desk, a file in his lap, lounging and austere.

'I can come back...' Harriet started to say, trying to throw water on an irrational flash of jealousy and hurt, like by being here Hermione, and Sirius, had somehow betrayed her.

'No, it's fine. I'll see you later,' Hermione told her. There was an odd, guilty gravitas to her words. Harriet frowned.

'Is every-'

But Hermione had already marched past her.

When Harriet turned back to Sirius, she found him watching her with apparent benign disinterest.

'Can we talk?' she asked. Suddenly it felt like someone had stuffed her throat with cotton wool.

'What would you like to talk about?' Sirius asked. He dropped his feet to the ground and pushed away the lavender file he'd been perusing.

'Snape.'

His eyes darkened but he said nothing; the neutral facial expression remained fixed.

'I'm sorry about yesterday,' Harriet said. 'I didn't mean to defy you or Kingsley. But I couldn't let his pride get him thrown into Azkaban.'

'His pride,' Sirius repeated. 'So what you know about him...it's shameful?'

Harriet hesitated, sensing that Sirius was not so much interested in her apology as he was in getting information out of her. 'Only to him,' she said finally.

'You're not going to tell me what it is, are you?' He said this musingly, but Harriet could see how it pitted at his eyes.

'It isn't my secret to share.'

'Isn't it?' Sirius asked, his apathy crumbling. 'You were there yesterday. You heard what Kingsley said. It's Snape's fault that James and Lily are dead. And you're willing to protect him?'

Harriet stared at her godfather, realising that he wasn't going to relent. He'd come too far and been hurt too much to see anything in Snape other than rot and evil. How could she explain to him that for every ounce of hatred in Sirius' soul, Snape loathed himself twice as much? That no prison sentence could be worse than the one he'd confined himself to?

How could she explain that she'd forgiven him because no matter how much and how hard she hated him, her loathing would never compare to his own?

'We'll be okay, won't we?' Harriet asked, frightened that her godfather saw this as some kind of mutiny; that it would burrow deeper into the rift that had opened up between them, until there was nothing left. 'You're not going to...?'

'Leave?' he said, looking even angrier, but still lidding it. 'I promised I would stay, Harriet.'

_That's not the same thing_ Harriet thought desperately, but she nodded.

'The first session is about to start.' Sirius straightened from his chair, rebuttoning his waistcoat and slinging his jacket over his shoulder. 'We're dealing with the Malfoys today. Anything I should know about?' The last words were jeering.

Harriet considered telling him about Malfoy's visit, about Narcissa's pregnancy. She considered telling Sirius about what she'd seen in the bathroom mirror all those months ago: a monochrome copy of herself in reverse, Malfoy's eyes black where hers were white, a precise black slide of teeth at his lips. She considered telling him what Malfoy had said—what she agreed with. She considered telling him about the dreams.

'No,' Harriet said, picking her eyes from the floor to stare at Sirius. There was a new light in him that she didn't like, that she didn't trust. 'There's nothing.' She left.

* * *

><p>Harriet didn't immediately register that it wasn't a dream. She'd dreamt this so often—of crackwhip spells and crumbling castles, people, always people being swallowed by ruins and blackness and maniacal laughter. Grappling for wands and flesh and life; the sear of breath heavily drawn, the sputter of blood...<p>

There was another crash, louder this time.

Harriet was out of her bed in a second. Her door exploded open of its own accord. Splinters rained down on her as she scrabbled down the stairs, her knees and ankles complaining as she took them three at a time. She spun to a stop on the first floor.

No, no.

Hermione and Ron's bedroom door hung open on its hinges. The room was black inside, and for a second Harriet wondered how the darkness had left a trail down the stairs, thick and shiny, drying in tacky patches, before she registered that it was blood.

Downstairs was another bang, and this time a muffled shout—Hermione.

Harriet dove into the foyer just as the front door bounced back against the wall, and was through it in another second. She was in her pajamas, barefoot, heart racing. Sparks flew from her wand. Ahead of her dark figures bounded across the lawn. The closest one dragged along a writhing bundle whose gangly outline Harriet was instantly able to recognise.

'RON!'

The figure faltered but didn't stop. There was a sudden twirl of fabric and air as the person Disapparated.

Harriet had just enough time to grasp a fistful of robe before she was torn through space, the screams of her friends whistling down to her.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Thank you all for the reviews! I'm sorry this took so long to update; I had most of the chapter sitting around in various chunks that just needed some polishing. I'll try to update more regularly. Let me know what you think :).**


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